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New York City Rebuilt Itself
With Style After Fire of 1835

By

Cynthia Crossen Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Sept. 4, 2002 2:29 p.m. ET

'How shall I attempt to describe the most awful calamity which has ever visited these United States," wrote Philip Hone, a businessman and former mayor of New York City, in his diary. "I am fatigued in body, disturbed in mind, and my fancy filled with images of horror which my pen is inadequate to describe."

The date was Dec. 17, 1835, and lower Manhattan lay in ruins. Some 700 buildings covering 52 acres-the heart of New York's flourishing business district-had been incinerated by an accidental fire so...